The Trumpology series of columns are also published on Capitol Hill Blue where I am a columnist, and are informed by my 40 years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I worked in Michigan as Mason Mental Health Center director and Middleboro, Massachusetts in private practice. Opinions on Trump come from my understanding of psychiatric diagnosis, psychology, and psychopathology. I consider Trump to be a sadistic impulsive malignant narcissist.

Search This Blog

September 11, 2016

Tues,, Sept. 20, 2016

By Hal Brown, MSW and Howard Covitz, PhD. Hal is retired clinical social worker, psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and mental health center director. Howard Covitz is a still practicing psychoanalyst. He was long-time Director of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies (Bryn Mawr, PA) and author of Oedipal Paradigms in Collision (1998/201) and many papers.

Gandering the Golden Goose -- Three Tough Decisions Obfuscated by the Trumpets of Campaigning

Tip that Canoe and Dump Tyler, Too

It Broke the Straw on the Camel's Back

Language is a knife that cuts every which way and loose. We’re thinking of three bits of language, describing three types of behavior that are the consequence of suffering through opposing goods …

Journalistic Neutrality ... The decision to err on the side of fairness by neutering the powers of the Fourth Estate in the face of someone who likely acts out in ways that may be detrimental to the entire engaged society or even the World.

Racial/Ethnic Profiling ... The decision to err on the side of abbreviating an individual's rights that protect her/him from illegal search and seizure rather than equal protection under the law of the suspected which would neuter some of the testosteronic powers of our armed police force.

The Goldwater Rule ... The decision to err on the side of protecting the public figure's privacy rights by neutering the powers of psychotherapists of all stripes to carry out their mandated requirement to report the likelihood of lethal damage by that public figure.

The first DSM which we used before laymen ever heard of it.

Some diplomats are breaking the article in the 1961 Geneva Convention which advises against speaking out on the politics of foreign nations (emphasis added), just as some psychotherapists, the authors among them, are speaking out against Trump using every relevant aspect of our special knowledge, most especially our expertise in diagnosis and our understanding of what some people with a certain diagnose are capable of doing as far as inflicting harm on others.

Article 41 of the Geneva Convention

1. Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State. They also have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State. www.mfa.gov.tr/...

Politico has an article about this changing among some diplomats because of Trump. (emphasis added) :

Trump has diplomats abandoning vows of silence

The Republican presidential candidate's international insults are making it tough for envoys to stay quiet as diplomatic custom requires.

The Republican presidential candidate's international insults are making it tough for envoys to stay quiet as diplomatic custom requires.

NEW YORK — There's a longstanding custom among the world's diplomats: You don't trash-talk candidates running for office in a foreign country.

Donald Trump is close to destroying that tradition.

As thousands of diplomats gather for the U.N. General Assembly here this week, many are struggling to hold their tongues about the brash billionaire running for the White House, a man who has managed to tick off much of the planet.

“If you represent one of these countries that has been insulted or attacked, you tend to react,” said one Latin American diplomat attending the General Assembly. Speaking of his own background, he told POLITICO, “We are very passionate, and our blood is pretty hot. But we have to play it cool and understand that this is a campaign, and an election, and that we are diplomats.”

To be fair, Trump's candidacy is testing the norms of plenty of professions, including journalism and psychiatry. But perhaps nowhere are the stakes higher than the realm of international relations.CONTINUED

The last paragraph (emphasis added) led two of your Daily Kos diary psychotherapists to reopen the discussion about whether we have been justified in using diagnosis terms and even postulating a diagnosis for Trump. (Hal’s diaries. Howard’s diaries)

As for diplomats, a few world leaders have come out with highly negative views about Trump (from the same article)

But in 2016, the Mexican president has compared Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler; the German foreign minister has warned that the Republican’s fear-driven brand of politics would be “dangerous” for the whole world; and the French president has said the real estate mogul’s “excesses” provoke a “retching feeling.”

It doesn't help, several foreign diplomats have privately said, that Trump's campaign structure is so opaque and his policy positions so mercurial.

"For our people in Washington, Trump is an enigma. When they look at his foreign policy views and advisers they're scratching their heads," a U.N.-based European diplomat said.

At a recent gathering in Washington, D.C., a handful of European diplomats were urged to share their true feelings about the U.S. presidential candidates.

David O’Sullivan, the European Union's ambassador to the United States, quipped that his confidential cables to his superiors back home about the election "will have to remain something that only future historians will read."

But, he added: "There’s a sense that this election is different from previous ones. But maybe there’s a temptation always to think that about every election.”

If you haven’t been following them, many of our diaries are about the psychopathology of Donald Trump. As experienced diagnosticians we analyze our myriad observations of Donald Trump’s behavior (his temperament and disposition as evidenced by television and radio, as well as accounts of people who spent a lot of time with him, especially “Art of the Deal” author Tony Schwartz. Schwartz now calls Trump a “sociopath” (he isn’t) and say’s “I put lipstick on a pig.” But he also describes numerous observations and interactions with Trump when he was presumably let his guard down and this a rare treasure trove for experts to make a distance diagnostic assessment.

We have more information about Donald Trump by far than psychiatrists ever had about Barry Goldwater.

Here’s what the controversy in the mental health community is all about.

When Barry Goldwater was running for president a large group of psychiatrists wrote that he wasn’t fit to be president:

Whether this was a decision based strictly on ethics or out of a fear of losing lawsuits only cynics would even consider.

The rule itself was formulated by the respected American Psychiatric Association. This is a professional association and membership isn’t required to practice psychiatry although most psychiatrists are members. It came out in 1973 and reads:

On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.[3]

Of course, it is highly unlikely that a public figure who thinks there may be less than a clean bill of mental health is going to submit to a mental health examination and authorize public disclosure of the results.

What has happened with Trump is that a large number of psychotherapists have in various forms made public their opinions about Trump, obviously from their unique point of view, i.e., as mental health professionals. This isn’t like librarians or teachers coming out with negative opinions about Trump. When mental heath professions express such opinions they are quite obviously speaking from the standpoint of having special knowledge about psychopathology.

PSY-VU While not breaking the letter of the Goldwater “rule” some therapists break the spirit. www.dailykos.com/… The opinions shared in comments to this diary were spirited

The controversy within the mental health field is between those who don’t want to make an actual diagnosis and those who do. Both groups think there are aspects of his personality that make him unfit or even dangerous to be president. The “don’t diagnose”group chooses instead to use words and terms that fit a diagnosis without actually making the diagnosis. The “it’s okay to diagnose Trump” group feels that the public is smart enough to see through the equivocating words (McAdams says “narcissism, disagreeableness, and grandiosity”) and see why these add up to a diagnosis which makes Trump not only unfit, but potentially dangerous to be president. Those of us who make and justify a diagnosis believe we should share our expertise to warn the public that because of what they have concluded is his diagnosis he represents a danger.

As most of you know, therapists have a duty to warn when the believe a client is a danger to self or others (it’s sometimes referred to as Tarasoff which you can look up). The authors believe that we are justified, and are acting ethically in ignoring the Goldwater rule and warning the public about Trump.

The psychological focus on Trump’s personality first came to national attention from the June cover story of The Atlantic, “The Mind of Donald Trump: Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency,” by Dan McAdams, Ph.D.

Life stories, the stories that give a life a sense of unity, meaning, and purpose. This is known as Narrative identity.

We focus on this because this article because it seems to have opened the door to other mental health professionals coming out about their opinions about Trump. But it should be noted that McAdams, highly qualified in the study of personality, has not devote his career to abnormal personality and the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Following this the next major publication to write about Trump’s personality was the New York Times on August 15th.

The 2016 Republican nominee’s incendiary, stream-of-consciousness pronouncements have strained that agreement (Goldwater rule) to the breaking point, exposing divisions in the field over whether such restraint is appropriate today.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have publicly flouted the Goldwater Rule, tagging Mr. Trump with an assortment of personality problems, including grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and “malignant narcissism.” The clinical insults are flying so thick that earlier this month, the psychiatric association posted a reminder that breaking the Goldwater Rule “is irresponsible, potentially stigmatizing, and definitely unethical.”

Putting a psychiatric label on a candidate they oppose can be a “seemingly irresistible tool for some in the field,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University who disapproves of the practice. “This year, perhaps more than most, they’re persuaded they’re saving the nation from a terrible fate.”

The New York Times article publicized a project begun by psychologist William Doherty, Ph.D called a manifesto, which we recommend you read here. Dr. William J. Doherty, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Family Social Science. He is author of a book on family rituals, titled “The Intentional Family”. From what we can tell, he is not an expert on psychopathology, and on the diagnosis and treatment pf psychiatric disorders, as the author of this article are.

The manifesto was signed by over 2,200 therapists. The authors of this articles were both banned from posting our disagreements about diagnosing Trump on the sites private discussion Facebook page. Consider that Doherty says this:

Sign the manifesto and join the Facebook group. Learn from colleagues, share your own passions, and decide what voice, if any, you’d like to have in the public sphere. You may surprise yourself, for example, by wanting to write blog posts that connect this initiative with your clinical passion areas, or share blog posts that your colleagues create.

You can see why it surprised us when we tried to discuss whether we had a case for making a public diagnosis.

When you read the manifesto with it’s long list of personality traits which disqualify him from being president and labeling them adding up to “Trumpism” is the same as diagnosing him, albeit with a diagnosis that is not in the current Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM-5 which thanks to Trump tens of thousands of laymen now are familiar with).

In point of fact, “Trumpism” as defined in this manifesto is a far more dangerous disorder than the one most psychotherapists have agreed he probably suffered from, narcissistic personality disorder.

We don’t by the disclaimer:

Trumpism is an ideology, not an individual, and it may well endure and grow after the Presidential election even if Donald Trump is defeated. (Variants can be seen all over Europe.) Trumpism is a set of ideas about public life and a set of public practices characterized by:

Trumpism is not an ideology, it is a psychopathology notable for beliefs and behaviors which include the following. These are symptoms of a severe psychiatric disorder, what we sometimes refer to as a constellation of disorder which includes symptoms like pathological lying, hedonism, and extreme misogyny which current don’t fit into the diagnostic manual.

Scapegoating and banishing groups of people who are seen as threats, including immigrants and religious minorities.

Degrading, ridiculing, and demeaning rivals and critics.

Fostering a cult of the Strong Man who:

Appeals to fear and anger

Promises to solve our problems if we just trust in him

Reinvents history and has little concern for truth

Never apologizes or admits mistakes of consequence

Sees no need for rational persuasion

Subordinates women while claiming to idealize them

Disdains public institutions like the courts when they are not subservient

Champions national power over international law and respect for other nations

Incites and excuses public violence by supporters

As experienced clinicians we have been able to explain why some of the diagnostic terms being bandied about regarding Trump are wrong, most notably that he’s a sociopath.

We see it as an ethical responsibility to help the public learn to use the tools of the mental health profession responsibly, not to become armchair psychologists, but to understand the basics of gathering evidence to factor into the rather easy to understand lists of criteria in the DSM-5 used to make a diagnosis.

Some psychotherapists seem to want to make psychiatric diagnosis seem far more complex than it really is. We’re not taking about a rare brain disorder or tropical disease. While there are some psychiatric conditions that take numerous sessions to diagnose and sometimes referrals to specialists, most can be diagnosed tentatively in 1-3 sessions.

The authors of this article have 80 years of clinical experience diagnosing and treating thousands of clients. We believe we have at the least as much information about Trump, if not more, than if we saw him face-to-face as a patient to make a diagnosis (always with the caution that meant health diagnoses are always tentative and open to revision based on new information coming from the client or those who observe the client.)

Monday, Sept. 19, 2016SHIT! Wake up, let dogs out, make coffee, take sip, turn on TV and news is that suspect in NYC bombing is an American of Afghan descent.

We know what tack Trump is going to take now, so I am trying to prepare the best I can for being infuriated and terrified until the election.Preview:

Donald Trump on Monday boasted of having prematurely called the New York City explosion a “bombing,” telling Fox News that he should become a TV news anchor because of his ability to read between the lines during the incident’s immediate aftermath. The Republican presidential nominee was initially criticized for telling a rally crowd that “a bomb went off” mere minutes after news broke of an explosion, which ultimately injured 29 people. “If you saw [Hillary Clinton] in the back of the plane—and she used the word ‘bombs’ also, by the way. I heard—I didn’t see it—but I heard I was criticized for calling it correctly,” Trump lamented to Fox & Friends via telephone. “But what I said was exactly correct. I should be a newscaster because I called it before the news.”Daily Beast

Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016Being president is hard work, 24/7, and you can’t make excuses when things go badly for you. The question I am hearing online more and more is whether Trump is unconsciously sabotaging himself… is this question finally seeping into the conscious orange slug brain…

Trump is giving a speech to the tax exempt non-partisan Remembrance Project to cheering members of the audience (one just said “I love you”). These are family members of those killed by non-documented immigrants/

Here’s the rub.

The Remembrance Project is a non-partisan educational foundation which is barred by Internal Revenue Service rules from endorsing any candidate for political office, or participating in any candidate’s campaign. The appearance of individual Remembrance Project victim’s family members, or group of such members, at any candidate’s political event to educate the public and draw attention to the entirely preventable and heartbreaking loss of their loved ones due to the illegal presence of criminal aliens in our country, DOES NOT constitute an endorsement of that candidate by the Remembrance Project or any of its affiliated organizations.

~ Maria Espinoza, National Director

This speeches being carried, apparently in full, on TV. The only news here is that this group is violating there tax exempt status.

The Newsweek story is now on the back burner, but what has taken it’s place are (at least) two more Trump disasters which may lead to Kellyanne Conway grabbing a life boat and getting far enough away from Trump’s sinking ship that she doesn’t get sucked down when it goes under.

The incredible disaster for Trump ignoring what we can assume has been Conway’s advice to restrain his unhinged egomaniacal impulses has been ignored.

Of course the catastrophe for Trump this week was the birther announcement fiasco and the media finally going bare knuckle against Tump and his hapless surrogates. Now it isn’t only cage fighter Joy Reid, who just bloodied a black Trump surrogate when he tried to blame Hillary for birtherism. I don’t know about Fox but most of the media seem to have taken off the gloves too.

Following this is the comparatively minor matter of Trump suggesting that Hillary’s Secret Service detail going unarmed. This is leading to headlines like this from Huffington Post:

“Let’s see what happens to her.”

Add this to the out of control animal killing son:

Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday suggested the media has helped Hillary Clinton by letting her “slide” on “every lie” and said that if Republicans did the same, the media would be “warming up the gas chamber” for them. www.cbsnews.com/…

and this:

Pepe on the right, next to Trump, is a meme promoted by the alt right often shown in a Nazi uniform.Poll from Aug. 25

I watch a lot of MSNBC. Joy is making the Trump surrogates squirm and look like idiots as I write this. Steve Cortez just said to a round of laughter “Donald Trump is running an incredibly non-racist campaign.”

I haven’t seen Kellyanne at all in about a week. Has anybody spotted her?

Will this perfect storm be the impetus to prompt Kellyanne to lower the life boat and gun the engine and head for the horizon?

Friday, Sept. 16, 2016

Tonight on Rachel Maddow:Discussing the alt-right press conference and how they are counting on Trump to advance their racist agenda, she showed this from Donald J. Trump, Jr.

The green cartoon to the right of Trump is Pepe the frog. The frog has become the meme promoted by the alt-right. Trump Jr., he of the gas chamber remark, said he had no idea who Pepe was.

Why does HuffPo spell bullshit “bulls**t? Overnight Facebook shares of the piece I put on Daily Kos about the Newsweek article and the media picked up 6,000 Facebook shares and more comments, and is now over 32,000

As a matter of pride in authorship I’d rather some of my other diaries — the ones I worked several hours on — got this kind of readership. I’m just glad that there’s a chance I did my bit, however tiny the influence of this diary was, to tweak the mainstream media into paying attention.

The “breaking news” on TV is about Trump, Dr. Oz, and his medical records, and the the Trump Foundation, but this should be the number one Trump news… are they too embarrassed because Newsweek did a deep comprehensive investigation and came up with extraordinary entanglements between Trump and some unsavory, and dare it say, deplorable foreign leaders?

I’ll give Daily Kos a pass because it’s not intended to be a breaking news liberal website. At least Kos had a “front page” story about this early today, but unfortunately it’s moved down the page. I don’t know where it will end up on Huffington Post, but it currently is the main story.

Rachel had it on last night. This should have alerted other media that this was coming.

Daily Beast had it as number five in their sidebar.

Politico, Buzzfeed, and Vox didn’t even have it.

The “breaking news” on TV is about Trump, Dr. Oz, and his medical records, and the the Trump Foundation, but this should be the number one Trump news… are they too embarrassed because Newsweek did a deep comprehensive investigation and came up with extraordinary entanglements between Trump and some unsavory, and dare it say, deplorable foreign leaders?

There’s no way to balance the news coverage of the Trump scandals with the Hillary “scandals.” First the Trump scandals are so egregious they should have ended the media taking him seriously months ago. The hyped up Hillary scandals don’t even deserve the name. See what Colin Powell said about Benghazi.

The media, if they are ever to be taken seriously, will have to admit that the sheer number of legitimate Trump scandals far outweigh the number of specious, made up, Hillary scandals.

A few days ago I posed the poll question as to whether readers thought CIA Director Brennan’s essentially calling Trump a liar would get the media coverage it deserved.

The majority were right. The news flew by like a hummingbird at a feeder and zoomed off just as quickly.

So here’s a far bigger story. Will the media make this an issue. Take the poll.

Throughout this campaign, the Trump Organization, which pumps potentially hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump family’s bank accounts each year, has been largely ignored. As a private enterprise, its businesses, partners and investors are hidden from public view, even though they are the very people who could be enriched by—or will further enrich—Trump and his family if he wins the presidency.

...the Trump family rakes in untold millions of dollars from the Trump Organization every year. Much of that comes from deals with international financiers and developers, many of whom have been tied to controversial and even illegal activities. None of Trump’s overseas contractual business relationships examined by Newsweek were revealed in his campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission, nor was the amount paid to him by his foreign partners.

I hope Daily Kos keeps this story on the top of their page all day where it is now…. Huffington Post has it as the lead and calls it rightly a bombshell, Beast no. 5 it’s in the sidebar , Politico doesn’t even have it…

The “breaking news” on TV is about Trump, Dr. Oz, and his medical records, and the the Trump Foundation, but this should be the number one Trump news… are they too embarrassed because Newsweek did a deep comprehensive investigation and came up with extraordinary entanglements between Trump and some unsavory, and dare it say, deplorable foreign leaders?

I’ll give Daily Kos a pass because it’s not intended to be a breaking news liberal website. At least Kos had a “front page” story about this early today, but unfortunately it’s moved down the page. I don’t know where it will end up on Huffington Post, but it currently is the main story.

Daily Beast had it as number five in their sidebar.

Politico, Buzzfeed, and Vox didn’t even have it.

The “breaking news” on TV is about Trump, Dr. Oz, and his medical records, and the the Trump Foundation, but this should be the number one Trump news… are they too embarrassed because Newsweek did a deep comprehensive investigation and came up with extraordinary entanglements between Trump and some unsavory, and dare it say, deplorable foreign leaders?

There’s no way to balance the news coverage of the Trump scandals with the Hillary “scandals.” First the Trump scandals are so egregious they should have ended the media taking him seriously months ago. The hyped up Hillary scandals don’t even deserve the name. See what Colin Powell said about Benghazi.

The media, if they are ever to be taken seriously, will have to admit that the sheer number of legitimate Trump scandals far out way the number of specious, made up, Hillary scandals.

A few days ago I posed the poll question as to whether readers thought CIA Director Brennan’s essentially calling Trump a liar would get the media coverage it deserved.

The majority were right. The news flew by like a hummingbird at a feeder and zoomed off just as quickly.

So here’s a far bigger story. Will the media make this an issue. Take the poll.

UPDATE on story below: Lawrence O’Donnell just played the clip of CIA Director Brennan and said "here’s the translation of this, the CIA chief just said Donald Trump is a liar.”When you think it can’t get any more unfuckenbelieveable dept.COMMENTSA sitting CIA director (almost) calls a presidential candidate a liar!’

Hillary didn’t almost collapse. We only saw her stumble and look like she was woozy. We do know she was stepping off a curb at the time and also lost a shoe. Here’s what it means for a person to collapse: to 2 fall downandbecomeunconscious, typically through illness or injury. This is not only untrue, we just don’t know she almost because unconscious, but it is an unfortunate choice of a word when she’s next to the site of the Two Towers which really did collapse.Meanwhile, here’s something Trump doesn’t want reported:

http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/library/lifesexraceages.pdf

Reports are saying she APPEARED to faint, but that seems impossible for anyone to judge. She may have gotten woozy as many of us have experienced even when not fighting off an infection, but being dehyrated in warm weather - reports also said she seemed to trip stepping of a curb and that she lost a shoe. Tripping and loosing a shoe would account for how unsteady she looked. I still expect a gloating cover on National Enquirer next week "proving" that Hillary suffers from a few more dread illnesses than those they "reported" on this week when they "revealed" how sick she was: 3 strokes, liver damage from booze, Alzheimer's, and violent rages.

Tech Note: I’ve been letting these pages get too long and my guess is that some of you with slower Internet download speeds may find that the page takes awhile to open, especially since I usually have a lot of pictures. I’m going to keep the pages shorter.

For those of you who want to check your Internet speed go to http://speedcheck.xfinity or http://www.speedtest.net . If you are not satisfied with your download speed you may be able to do what I just did. XFinity can upgrade your service for a small fee and also change you cables and connections to maximize speed and put a powered booster where you cable comes into your residence. My downloads are now 3-5 times faster than they were before.

No comments:

What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.